Sounds of Budget Ax Falling

Nesoff, Elizabeth, The Christian Science Monitor

When Albert Margolis and his wife attended the final music
program for their son's kindergarten class in May, they were shocked
when a teacher stood up after the performance and announced that the
music program was cut indefinitely.

"She was almost in tears, actually, that this had to happen," Mr.
Margolis says. That Adam's school, Bathgate Elementary School in
Mission Viejo in California's affluent Orange County, is a magnet
school for the arts makes the cut even more startling.

"If I had known that this was coming, I would have done something
sooner," he says.

Bathgate's situation is not unique. All over the country, school
districts are facing tight budgets and rigorous testing mandates
that force them to cut non- academic programs. There is no way to
count the number of music programs eliminated because each school
district tackles its budget differently, but such whittling is
rampant.

"It's a state-by-state and district-by-district story tied
directly to school budgets and school quality," says Mary Luehrsen,
director of public affairs and government relations for NAMM, the
International Music Products Association. "It doesn't take a brain
surgeon to see that where there's no quality of education, there's
probably not a music program."

Budget woes have caused school districts to weigh the arts
against desirable amenities such as smaller class sizes. In
addition, state testing standards and the No Child Left Behind Act
force school districts to focus time and resources on core subjects.
"Music education programs get cut because decent people are trying
to make tough decisions in hard times," says Michael Blakeslee,
deputy executive director of the National Association for Music
Education. "However, you can't cut music without cutting something
important out of kids' lives."

Yet the problem is not as straightforward as state deficits or
testing. "It's safe to say that the fiscal environment in which
people provide education is a tighter, more difficult environment
than it was 20 years ago," says John Augenblick, president of a
consulting firm that works with state policymakers on school-
funding issues. "Rather than seeing a school as serving a community
purpose, it's much easier to view it as only serving particular
people at a particular time in a particular place."

Mr. Augenblick cites a lack of cohesive community concern for
education and a greater focus on individual interests as part of the
problem, namely that people without children are not always
interested in funding school programs. …

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